


Two Truths and a Lie

by mosylu



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: College AU, F/M, Soulmate AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-04
Updated: 2019-09-04
Packaged: 2020-10-06 21:43:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20513969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mosylu/pseuds/mosylu
Summary: Everyone knows you can't lie to your soulmate, which is why every introduction after the age of eighteen is some silly lie at first. You know, just in case. But Caitlin Snow has decided she's not ready to meet her soulmate, so she's just going to tell the truth to every new face and leave finding her soulmate until later.She fails to take into consideration that her soulmate might really want to meether.Written for Killervibe Week Day 6: Soulmates





	Two Truths and a Lie

The lab was filled with deafening sound as people came in and got settled and said hi to each other. Caitlin parked herself at an empty table and started setting out her lab notebook and her pencil case.

“This seat taken?” said a boy with long hair and a Star Trek t-shirt, giving her a bright smile. 

She shook her head. 

“Thanks.” He dropped his bag on the table and rooted around in it. “I was afraid I was going to be late.”

Caitlin nodded at the front of the room. “You’re okay. Professor Stein just walked in.”

“Settle down,” the prof called out. “Settle down! Let’s get started, people. You all know me, if you were at the lecture yesterday.” He narrowed his eyes at them. “If you weren’t at the lecture yesterday, we’re going to have a problem.”

The boy laughed. Caitlin didn’t. 

He leaned over. “Hey, don’t be fooled. Stein puts on a mean face, but it’s all crust. He’s pretty chill, actually.”

“I’m not worried,” Caitlin whispered back. “Shhh.”

“The first thing we’re going to do,” Professor Stein announced, “is go around the room and introduce ourselves. We’ll all be working closely in this lab and you should know each other.” He looked over his glasses. “And none of those silly fake names you kids do these days.”

“But sir,” said a boy in the front row, tall and lanky and bright-eyed. “What if our soulmate is in the room? The only way we’ll know is if we can’t lie to them.”

“We’re a group of less than twenty,” Stein said. “Even if you assumed that your soulmate was on this campus and not any of the million other places in the world they could possibly be, the odds of them being in this room with us is -” He narrowed his eyes momentarily.

“Point four-five percent,” Caitlin said.

Stein bestowed a smile on her. “Well calculated.”

“But mathematically speaking, there’s still a chance,” said the boy at her table. He turned and grinned at her. “I mean, they’re our soulmate. We have to meet them somewhere, right?”

The rest of the lab group giggled. 

“You know, in my day, we didn’t have soulmates,” Professor Stein said. “We fell in love and dated and got our hearts broken.”

“That sounds awful,” the boy said. 

“Such a waste of time,” Caitlin muttered. 

The boy glanced at her, looking surprised. “Not to mention getting your heart broken must’ve sucked.”

“It did suck,” Stein said. “But it made us better. Stronger.” He looked around at the hopeful faces and rolled his eyes. “Fine,” he said. “Fine. Do the silly names, it’s not like you’ve got several experiments to run through this session. But I’m warning you, if you find your soulmate in the next five minutes, you’ll refrain from true love’s kiss until after class, understood?”

Everyone giggled again. 

Stein rolled his eyes again, but the corner of his mouth quirked up. Caitlin thought the boy next to her might have a point about it all being a put-on. “We’ll start with you,” the prof said, pointing at the lanky boy who’d argued for the fakes. 

He said brightly, “My name is Albert Einstein!” His face fell as he was able to tell the obvious lie with no problem at all. “I mean. Barry Allen.”

_No soulmate for you,_ Caitlin thought. Not today, anyway.

He wasn’t the only one to start with a fake name, but he was the only one who looked so deeply disappointed by his ability to lie. Most of them picked a scientist - Galileo, Marie Curie, Stephen Hawking. It was a bunch of science majors, after all. 

A few people just said their own name, smiling the smug smile of a person who’d already found their soulmate when everyone else looked at them. 

When it came to her, Caitlin said, “Caitlin Snow,” without any fuss, and looked down at her notebook. 

She hadn’t found her soulmate yet, but she was only twenty. There was time. She was here to learn, not get tied down for the rest of her life to a stranger.

Everyone thought soulmates were so sweet and romantic. Try to tell a mild lie and discover the person you were meant to spend your life with.

But the thought filled her with dread. What if they wanted to get married right away? Have kids right away? She’d heard horror stories of people who gave up their dreams for a person they’d barely met. She had a lot of dreams, and no intention of giving up a single one of them.

To her surprise, the boy next to her said, “Cisco Ramon,” without correcting himself, either. She stole a glance at him. He was looking at his notebook, too, brows drawn together. Maybe he was concerned about this class. Stein was supposed to be tough.

“Fine,” Dr. Stein said. “Now that charade is done with, and we can move on to our experiments. For today, work with the person next to you.”

“Sweet,” Cisco Ramon said, his pensive look evaporating. “Lab buddies!” He put out his fist. “You bump it,” he added when Caitlin didn’t make a move.

“Oh,” she said, and did. He grinned triumphantly and handed her a pair of safety goggles. 

She found she liked working with him. He made lots of pop-culture references and jokes, and chattered the entire time, but his science was solid. Not to mention, his smiles made her feel like she’d swallowed hot chocolate, and his high fives when something went right made her feel like Marie Curie.

By the end of the lab session, she’d learned that he was bilingual, had grown up in Central City, was living at home while he went to school - “only cuz it’s cheaper, believe me” - planned to be a mechanical engineer, and had a firm opinion on the proper order of the Star Wars movies and which captain of the _Enterprise_ was the best. 

She’d also decided that she would ask him to be her permanent lab partner.

“Sorry if I talked your ear off,” he said as they were cleaning up. They’d had to re-start one of their experiments, and they were among the last ones in the room. “If you want the truth, I was a little weirded out and that’s sort of the way I cope.”

“I didn’t mind,” she said, packing her lab notebook in her bag. “Weirded out by what?” She held her breath. What if he’d been weirded out by her?

“Can you keep a secret?”

“What?”

“So you know how I just said my real name when we were all introducing ourselves?”

“Yes, I noticed.” He hadn’t mentioned his soulmate at all, she realized. Not once. 

“I did have a fake name ready to go,” he said. “Guacardo.”

“Isn’t that the avocado?”

“Might as well have fun with it, right? But when I started to say it, I couldn’t. It was like there was something in my throat, or my tongue froze up. It was the weirdest sensation.”

She looked up, eyes wide. “But that means - ”

“My soulmate was in this room.” His smile beamed out, big and excited, and then he sobered. “But nobody else looked like they couldn’t lie. What does that mean?” He looked tragic. “Oh, shit, what if I’m one of those poor saps where like, they’re my soulmate, but I’m not their soulmate? Oh, _shit.”_

She focused on putting all her pens and pencils and highlighters back in her pencil case. “Maybe, um, maybe they didn’t try to lie.”

“Who would do that, unless they already had their soulmate?”

“Maybe it’s someone who wants to focus on school and not think about a soulmate, and just decided to tell the truth all the time until they were ready.”

“Ready for what? Like I’m going to drag them to a courthouse and make them marry me just because we found each other?”

“M-maybe?”

“Come on. I’ve got dreams and stuff. I don’t want to be married and settled down yet either.” He scowled. “Who would take that risk? Who would want to wait? What if you never run across your soulmate ever again?”

“Maybe it sounded like a good idea before.”

Before. Before she was faced with a smiling boy with his shiny hair and his nerdy jokes, who looked so disappointed that his soulmate might want to put off meeting him. 

He shook his head and hoisted his bag onto his shoulder. “I’m gonna say something at the start of next class. I don’t care if Stein gets mad. I just want to know.”

She grabbed his arm. “Cisco? Ask me my name.”

“What? You’re Caitlin - “ He stared at her. 

“Please,” she said. “Just ask.”

“O - okay? What’s your name?”

_Rachel,_ she thought. _Madison. Danielle_. 

But all the names that weren’t hers bottled up in her throat, refusing to be spoken aloud. 

His eyes went wide with wonder and happiness.

“Caitlin,” she gasped. “My name is Caitlin Snow.”

He took her hand and wrapped it in his. “It is so good to meet you, Caitlin Snow.”

FINIS


End file.
